Day 1: Late Evening - The Pain of Knowing
Vas lumbered to his bunk, boots nearly scuffing the floor as the chatter of the dining area fading to a faraway place. Tucking his worn boots under his bed he laid down with a weary sigh blowing out a plume of smoke before smashing the cigarette in the ashtray and put what little worldly possessions he had on what could pass as a nightstand. Cigarettes, lighter and what little cash he had left. She knew it was him. That wasn’t even in question. He felt it, the coldness from her, it been starling to him. He had thought it would have been different. She would hug him fiercely. Cool fingers brushing across his features, his mother seeing the child she lost so long ago. “I thought you died.” She would say the barest tremble in her voice. “I’m sorry.” Imani said crisply cutting Vas short. The hope and image he had built around her fractured. He would have lied. He wouldn’t have told her what really happened. He was just another war orphan at some temple on some lonely dusty planet at the edge of the galaxy, far away from the worst of the war that separated them. Nothing awful in that. Same thing he told Jacy. “You are here now.” She would have assured him. “We have all the time in the ‘verse now.” She would say pressing a soft cheek to his battle-worn hand. She would think him an honest boy whose hands worked for a living, not soak in blood and roughed in war. “But you're mistaken.” She said. He hadn’t been. She hadn’t looked at him. He mourned her for so long and kept her alive in his head, a warm memory reminding him he was human still and she … she hadn’t. Did she discard him when she had been saved from the bloody mud on Santo? Did she wonder what happened? Did she ever think what could have been? No. He doubted she did. She had, secretly or maybe not, been relived. He could almost see that relief shatter when she had paused for the long moment. “My son.” She would hum warmly. There would have been a joy in saying that again. Not sorrow. He had brought light back in her life she thought forever lost. “I love you so.” “I never had a son.” She did. He had been standing right there. Vas would have brimmed with a joy he hadn’t felt since he had been taken from Santo. Love. Real unconditional love. Someone in the cold ‘verse to forgive him, to love him and remind him he wasn’t alone and… … his heart ached … …and… … his heart broke … …and… “I never had a son.” That dream withered and died. For nothing other than wanting to see her. Vas took in a ragged breath. She didn’t love him. He wiped away the forming tears and rolled to his side. She didn’t want him. He closed his eyes. Still feeling the weight in his chest. ~“Réncí de fú qǐng dài wǒ líkāi, Bǎ wǒ dài zǒu, bì shàng wǒ de xīn … Ràng wǒ chéngwéi yīkuài shítou.(Merciful Buddha please take me away, take me away and close my heart ... make me a stone.) Don’t let me dream tonight.~ He though drifting to a place where he, for a moment, could forget his pain.